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925 


NATIONALITY  AND  HISTORY 


BY 


H.  MORSE  STEPHENS 


REPRINTED   FROM    THE 


VOL.  XXI.,  NO.  ^  JANUARY  1916 


[Keprinted  from  THE  AMERICAN  HISTORICAL  REVIEW,  Vol.  XXI.,  No.  2,  Jan.,  1916.] 


NATIONALITY   AND   HISTORY1 

IN  the  number  of  the  Contemporary  Review  of  London  for  July, 
1887  (pp.  107-121),  there  appeared  a  short  article  on  "  Modern 
Historians  and  their  Influence  on  Small  Nationalities  ".  After  more 
than  twenty-eight  years,  the  writer  of  that  article,  greatly  honored 
by  election  to  the  presidency  of  the  American  Historical  Association, 
takes  up  the  larger  and  more  general  topic  of  "  Nationality  and 
History"  as  the  subject  of  his  presidential  address  at  the  annual 
meeting  of  the  Association.  Throughout  those  twenty-eight  years 
his  thoughts  have  dwelt  upon  the  influences  which  prevent  the  clear, 
accurate,  and  truthful  statement  of  what  has  happened  in  the  past ; 
as  student  and  teacher  of  history  he  has  come  to  realize  more  and 
more  the  futility  of  pretended  impartiality ;  and  at  the  last  he  has 
yielded  to  the  conviction  that  the  first  duty  of  the  historical  scholar 
is  to  grasp  the  fact  that  his  limitations  as  a  human  being  must  ever 
debar  him,  even  if  the  most  complete  material  lies  ready  to  his  hand, 
from  attempting  more  than  a  personal  interpretation  of  some  part 
or  period  of  the  past. 

Every  generation  writes  its  own  history  of  the  past.  It  is  not 
so  much  the  acquisition  or  mastery  of  new  material  as  the  changing 
attitude  of  each  generation  that  causes  the  perpetual  re-writing  of 
the  long  story  of  man  living  in  community  with  his  fellow-men. 
Each  generation  looks  at  the  past  from  a  different  angle,  and  the 
historian  is  inevitably  controlled  by  the  spirit  of  his  age.  Every 
historian  is  unconsciously  biased  by  his  education  and  surroundings 
and  in  his  historical  works  displays  not  only  his  interpretation  of 
the  past,  but  also  the  point  of  view  of  the  period  in  which  he  lives. 
Honestly,  under  the  inspiration  of  the  truth-lovers  of  his  time, 
whether  they  be  bold  thinkers  or  ardent  men  of  science,  the  writer 
of  history  tries  to  discover  and  tell  the  truth,  the  whole  truth,  and 

1  Presidential  address  read  before  the  American  Historical  Association, 
at  Washington,  December  28,  1915. 

AM.  HIST.   REV.,  VOL.  XXI.  — 15.  (225) 


226  H.  M.  Stephens 

nothing  but  the  truth.  But,  in  his  heart  of  hearts,  if  he  be  not  a 
self-deceived  fanatic,  he  knows  well  that  he  cannot  free  himself 
from  his  human  limitations,  and  that  his  work,  whether  it  be  in  re 
search,  in  narration,  or  in  interpretation,  can  only  approximate  the 
truth.  To  understand  the  writings  of  any  historian,  we  of  to-day 
know  that  our  first  duty  is  to  study  his  personality  and  the  point  of 
view  of  his  age.  We  no  longer  believe  in  the  veracity  of  Thucy- 
dides  or  Tacitus ;  we  know  that  the  great  Athenian  colored  his  facts 
to  make  a  dramatic  story,  and  that  the  great  Roman  satirist  and 
rhetorician  was  of  the  race  of  pamphleteers,  more  intent  to  score  the 
failings  of  the  rulers  of  a  past  generation  and  to  insinuate  their 
shortcomings  than  to  recognize  the  way  in  which  the  early  Roman 
emperors  and  their  imperial  system  maintained  the  peace  and  order 
of  the  Mediterranean  world.  Since  Clio  was  reckoned  among  the 
Muses,  the  Greeks  regarded  history  as  a  branch  of  imaginative 
literature,  demanding  artistic  presentation,  and  this  idea  was  not 
dissipated  until  the  eighteenth  century.  It  was  part  of  the  business 
of  an  historian  to  assert  his  impartiality  and  to  declare  that  his  duty 
was  to  discover  and  tell  the  truth,  but  his  work  as  an  historian  was 
not  judged  by  his  truthfulness  and  impartiality  but  by  his  literary 
skill.  All  students  of  history  know  Lucian's  inimitable  "  The  Way 
to  write  History ",  and  how  the  witty  Syrian  declares  that  "  the 
historian's  one  task  is  to  tell  the  thing  as  it  happened  ",2  but  they 
also  recollect  that  his  whole  essay  is  concerned  rather  with  the  way 
in  which  the  story  is  to  be  told  than  with  the  method  by  which 
truth  and  impartiality  are  to  be  attained.  The  example  of  the 
classical  writers  of  Greece  and  Rome  was  supreme  until  the  eigh 
teenth  century,  and  the  protestations  of  truth-seeking  and  truth- 
telling  were  invariably  followed  by  histories  that  exhibited  either  the 
personal  views  of  the  writer  with  regard  to  the  past,  or  at  the  very 
least  the  influence  of  the  age  in  which  he  lived. 

It  is  curious  to-day  to  read  these  protestations  of  impartiality 
and  truth-seeking,  which  form  the  opening  passages  or  prefaces  of 
nearly  all  histories  written  in  ancient,  medieval,  and  modern  times. 
They  are  perfectly  honest  protestations,  for  most  historians  intended 
to  tell  the  truth  and  were  convinced  that  they  had  discovered  and 
interpreted  it.  But  "  Methinks  they  do  protest  too  much  ",  and  the 
very  fact  that  they  felt  it  necessary  to  protest  at  all  reveals  that  at 
the  back  of  their  hearts  lingered  a  doubt  as  to  whether  they  would  be 
implicitly  believed,  just  as  the  skilled  liar  or  romancer  feels  it  neces 
sary  to  preface  his  best  stories  with  the  remark:  "  I  am  going  to  tell 

2  The  Works  of  Lucian  of  Sanwsata  (translated  by  H.  W.  Fowler  and  E.  G. 
Fowler,  Oxford,  1905),  II.  128. 


Nationality  and  History  227 

the  exact  truth."  Unswerving  faith  in  Christianity  formed  the  basis 
of  the  knowledge  and  the  narratives  of  the  medieval  writers;  even 
the  scepticism  of  the  Renaissance  accepted  the  assumptions  of  the 
ancient  historians  of  Greece  and  Rome;  and  the  historical  contro 
versialists  of  the  period  of  the  Protestant  Reformation  were  firmly 
convinced  that  their  religious  views  were  correct  and  interpreted 
the  past  in  the  light  of  their  particular  beliefs.  We  smile  to-day  at 
the  legends  in  which  our  predecessors  so  firmly  believed,  and  each 
generation  sets  up  a  new  conception  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
past,,  which  it  thinks  justifies  its  smiles.  The  great  historians  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  Gibbon,  for  instance,  and  Voltaire,  were  quite  as 
certain  that  they  understood  the  past  correctly  as  Orosius  and  Bos- 
suet,  and  regarded  themselves  as  leading  the  world  to  the  truth  on 
the  basis  of  pure  rationalism  as  their  predecessors  on  the  basis  of 
accepted  Christianity. 

Just  as  the  believers  and  sceptics  in  revealed  religion  thought  that 
they  possessed  the  key  to  the  right  understanding  of  the  past  and 
sought  the  justification  of  their  beliefs  and  unbeliefs  in  their  inter 
pretation  of  past  happenings,  so  all  political  historians  honestly  be 
lieved  in  the  all-importance  of  politics  and  expounded  their  own  polit 
ical  theories  and  convictions  in  their  narratives  of  events.  "  History 
is  past  politics",  cried  Professor  Freeman  of  Oxford,  "and 'politics 
is  present  history  ",  and  Professor  Thomas  Arnold,  also  of  Oxford, 
declared  that  "  the  historian  must  be  a  good  party  man  ",  showing 
the  na'ive  idea  that  politics,  and  even  a  particular  brand  of  politics, 
has  been  the  only  real  force  in  the  building  of  civilization.  In  this 
they  had  good  warrant  from  the  ancient  classical  historians  whose 
works  they  knew  so  well  and  whose  example  had  so  deeply  im 
pressed  them.  The  recurrence  to  a  perverted  and  inaccurate  view 
of  the  past  as  a  source  for  political  arguments  in  the  present  was  no 
more  extraordinary  than  the  previous  appeal  to  a  perverted  and  in 
accurate  view  of  the  past  as  a  justification  for  any  variety  of  religious 
faith  or  ecclesiastical  organization. 

This  brings  me  to  the  actual  subject  of  this  address.  The  belief 
in  nationality  has  been  in  the  nineteenth  century  as  fundamental  a 
doctrine  as  the  belief  in  Christianity  or  in  monarchy  or  democracy 
or  aristocracy  in  previous  ages.  Just  as  a  fervent  belief  in  Chris 
tianity,  based  upon  history  and  dogmatic  theology,  led  to  a  belief  in 
the  righteousness  of  slaying  Mohammedans  in  the  period  of  the 
Crusades;  just  as  a  fervent  belief  in  Catholicism  or  Lutheranism 
or  Calvinism,  based  upon  history  and  dogmatic  theology,  was  held  to 
justify  religious  persecution  and  the  religious  wars  of  the  sixteenth 


228  H.  M.  Stephens 

and  seventeenth  centuries  in  Europe;  just  as  a  fervent  belief  in  dif 
ferent  political  theories  led,  in  part  at  least,  to  the  civil  wars  in 
England  in  the  seventeenth  century  and  in  the  United  States  of 
America  in  the  nineteenth  century;  so  a  fervent  belief  in  the  doc 
trine  of  nationality  has  led  to  enmity  between  nations  in  the  nine 
teenth  century.  Historians  had  their  share  in  creating  and  justifying 
the  fervor  of  religious  and  political  beliefs  in  the  past;  they  have  had 
their  share  also  in  creating  and  maintaining  the  national  fanaticism 
of  the  present.  Being  men  and  not  machines,  they  have  felt  the 
spirit  of  their  times  and  expressed  it.  When  Pope  Urban  II. 
preached  the  Crusade  against  Islam  at  Clermont,  he  spoke  in  all 
honesty  and  roused  Latin  Christendom  with  his  eloquence,  though 
the  fundamental  intolerance  of  Christian  and  Mohammedan  against 
each  other  had  long  been  felt;  and  the  nationalist  historians  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  though  merely  voicing  the  feelings  of  their  con 
temporaries,  must  bear  their  share  of  the  responsibility  of  setting 
the  nations  of  the  world  against  each  other. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  examine  the  history  of  the  doctrine  of 
nationality  in  minute  detail.  Nationality  has  been  regarded  as  the 
legitimate  and  natural  outcome  of  family,  tribal,  and  racial  organiza 
tion  ;  it  has  also  been  declared  to  be  the  result  of  neighborhood  feel 
ing.  To  some  theorists,  the  chief  bond  of  nationality  appears  to  be 
that  of  a  common  language,  which  is  obviously  contradicted  by  the 
intense  patriotism  of  the  Swiss  nation;  to  others  the  bond  of  race 
unity  seems  most  attractive,  in  spite  of  the  denial  by  the  ethnologists 
that  there  is  any  such  thing  as  a  pure  race ;  while  to  others  again  the 
most  effective  definition  seems  to  be  that  of  a  common  historic  tra 
dition,  which  binds  together  into  one  historic  community  people  of 
different  races  and  different  languages.  What  is  certain  is  that  there 
is  a  radical  contrast  between  historians  like  Gibbon,  who  looked  upon 
the  Roman  Empire  of  the  second  century  A.  D,,  with  its  unity  of 
administration  in  spite  of  the  diversity  of  population,  as  the  ideal  of 
civilization,  and  writers  like  Stewart  Chamberlain,  who  regard 
nationality  in  general,  and  one  nationality  in  particular,  as  the  greatest 
possible  force  making  for  human  progress.  In  the  later  Middle 
Ages,  the  word  "  nation  "  seems  to  have  been  more  especially  used 
in  the  matter  of  university  organization  than  as  marking  political 
or  racial  differences.  Martin  Luther,  it  is  true,  made  his  "  Address 
to  the  Christian  Nobility  of  the  German  Nation"  in  1520,  but  even 
in  his  time  the  ruling  idea  was  rather  the  unity  of  Western  Euro 
pean  civilization  than  its  diversity  among  different  nations.  While 
the  consciousness  of  national  patriotism  emerges  especially  in  Spain, 


Nationality  and  History  229 

France,  and  England  in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  the 
tendency  of  the  eighteenth  century  was  in  the  opposite  direction. 
States  were  regarded  as  the  political  units  rather  than  nations,  and 
the  changing  of  the  control  of  Italy  and  the  Catholic  Netherlands, 
and,  above  all,  the  partitions  of  Poland  marked  the  indifference  gen 
erally  felt  towards  the  idea  of  nationality.  Civilization  was  held  to 
be  European,  not  national;  literature  and  science  were  cultivated 
in  common  by  the  scholars  of  different  states;  universal  histories 
were  in  more  favor  than  national  histories;  and  Goethe  could  de 
clare  aloud  that  "  above  the  nations  was  humanity  ". 

All  this  changed  with  the  French  Revolution.  Feeling  itself  at 
issue  with  the  states  of  Europe,  revolutionary  France  appealed  to  the 
pride  of  national  patriotism.  The  first  years  of  the  Revolution  and 
the  Constitution  of  1791  had  abolished  the  old  French  provinces 
with  their  varying  history,  their  different  laws,  their  local  institutions, 
and  their  provincial  customs,  and  with  the  establishment  on  Septem 
ber  21,  1792,  of  the  French  Republic,  "  one  and  indivisible",  a  new 
national  France  was  born.  National  fanaticism  brought  nearly  all 
Frenchmen  fit  for  war  under  arms,  and  the  triumph  of  republican 
France  over  all  her  foes  justified  the  principle  of  nationality  in  the 
eyes  of  Frenchmen.  But  not  satisfied  with  the  success  of  the 
national  defense,  republican  France  became  aggressive.  Having  suc 
cessfully  defended  herself,  she  now  began  to  interfere  with  the 
national  rights  of  others.  Under  the  leadership  of  an  Italian  gen 
eral,  a  professional  army  was  developed  from  the  army  of  national 
defense  and  the  meteoric  career  of  General  and  then  First  Consul 
Bonaparte  culminated  in  his  coronation  as  the  Emperor  Napoleon  on 
December  2,  1804.  Napoleon  was  a  typical  eighteenth-century 
thinker ;  he  was  an  Italian  with  the  cosmopolitan  views  of  the  Ital 
ians,  who  were  accustomed  to  regard  themselves  as  Florentines,  or 
Venetians,  or  Neapolitans,  and  who  had  made  no  particular  objec 
tions  to  being  governed  in  their  different  states  by  Spanish  or  Haps- 
burg  princes ;  he  regarded  Europe  as  a  unit,  which  should  not  be 
divided  into  warring  and  hostile  states,  but  benevolently  administered 
according  to  the  ideals  of  the  enlightened  despots ;  and  since  he  was 
himself  a  man  without  a  country,  he  had  no  sympathy  with  the  ideas 
of  nationality.  The  Napoleonic  army  was  his  army,  and  not  a 
national  French  army ;  the  Napoleonic  empire  was  a  European  em 
pire,  and,  as  Professor  Driault  has  pointed  out,  he  had  it  in  mind, 
if  he  had  been  successful  in  his  Russian  campaign,  to  move  the 
capital  of  his  dominions  to  Rome  and  there  renew  the  glories  of  the 
ancient  Roman  Empire. 


230  H.  M.  Stephens 

The  cosmopolitan  ideas  of  the  statesmen  and  historians  of  the 
eighteenth  century  had  their  effect  upon  the  political  theories  of 
Napoleon.  Gibbon  and  the  writers  of  universal  history  had  dwe't 
upon  the  services  rendered  to  European  humanity  by  the  unity  of 
the  Roman  Empire  and  the  extension  of  the  Pax  Romana,  and  had 
regarded  its  break-up  as  the  beginning  of  barbarism.  Consciously 
carrying  out  the  spirit  of  his  century  Napoleon  deliberately  hoped 
and  planned  in  his  empire  to  restore  the  glorious  peace  of  the  days 
of  Trajan  and  Hadrian  and  the  Antonines. 

Against  these  grandiose  ideas,  the  Europe  of  the  political  sover 
eign  states  could  not  successfully  contend.  The  Hapsburgs  and 
the  Hohenzollerns  alike  went  down  before  the  Napoleonic  army. 
The  princes  of  central  Europe  bowed  the  knee  to  the  conqueror, 
who  redistributed  their  states  and  made  new  kings  and  new  states 
in  the  old  high-handed  imperial  fashion  of  ancient  Rome.  Napoleon 
carried  all  before  him  until  he  came  into  conflict  with  the  national 
idea,  which  had  saved  republican  France  and  which  he  never  under 
stood.  First  in  Britain  arose  a  burst  of  national  patriotism  under 
the  threat  of  invasion  from  the  camp  at  Boulogne;  the  navy  be 
came  the  national  service ;  Nelson  became  the  national  hero ;  national 
volunteers  were  raised  and  drilled  for  national  defense;  Tom  Dib- 
din  wrote  his  sea-songs;  and  Wordsworth  in  a  series  of  splendid 
sonnets  expressed  the  fullness  of  the  national  idea.  From  the 
divided  country  of  the  War  of  American  Independence,  from  the 
unwilling  opponent  of  republican  France,  governed  by  Pitt's  co 
ercion  acts,  with  an  army  recruited  from  the  jails  and  the  poor- 
houses  and  a  mutinous  navy  manned  by  the  press-gang^arose  a  united 
and  patriotic  nation.  Then  came  the  insurrection  of  the  Spaniards 
and  the  Portuguese  against  the  interference  of  Napoleon  and  the 
assertion  of  their  national  spirit  against  foreign  invasion.  Some 
Frenchmen,  notably  Talleyrand,  understood  the  writing  on  the  wall, 
but  not  Napoleon.  Secure  in  his  belief  in  European  imperialism,  he 
refused  to  modify  his  ideas.  The  bitter  opposition  of  the  Tyrolese 
under  Andreas  Hofer  in  1809  might  have  taught  him  that  even 
central  Europe  would  not  submit  permanently  to  Napoleonic  con 
trol ;  the  Duke  of  Brunswick  and  the  gallant  Schill  might  have 
warned  him  that  even  the  Germans  might  resist;  but  convinced  of 
the  validity  of  his  theory  of  empire  and  the  grandeur  of  his  aims  he 
persisted  in  his  policy.  The  invasion  of  Russia  in  1812  was  the 
beginning  of  the  end;  though  hardly  a  century  had  elapsed  since 
Peter  the  Great  turned  Muscovy  into  Russia  and  spread  the  bound 
ary  of  Europe  to  the  Ural  Mountains,  a  Russian  national  spirit 


Nationality  and  History  2  3 1 

showed  itself  and  the  Napoleonic  Grand  Army  vanished  in  the  snow 
and  frost.  The  following  year  witnessed  the  uprising  of  Germany. 
Inspired  by  Prussian  valor  and  organization,  by  the  propaganda  of 
such  German  enthusiasts  as  Vater  Jahn,  by  such  poems  as  Arndt's 
"  The  German  Fatherland  "  and  Korner's  "  Song  of  the  Sword  ",  a 
German  national  patriotism  revealed  itself,  and  a  German  nation  did 
what  Hapsburg  and  Hohenzollern  had  failed  to  do  and  ended  Napo 
leonic  imperialism.  France  refused  to  rise  in  her  national  might  to 
support  the  adventurer,  who  had  used  her  national  armies  to  found 
his  European  empire,  and  the  Napoleonic  Empire  came  to  an  end. 
Nationalism  had  triumphantly  'asserted  itself  and  the  idea  and  the 
doctrine  of  nationality  had  been  born. 

When  the  diplomatists  of  Europe  re-made  the  map  of  Europe 
under  the  guidance  of  Metternich  in  the  Congress  of  Vienna,  they 
showed  themselves  absolutely  opposed  to  the  doctrine  of  nationality. 
They  united  the  Protestant  and  the  Catholic  Netherlands  despite  the 
difference  of  the  prevailing  religions  and  the  historic  separation  of  the 
two  states ;  they  sanctioned  the  union  of  Sweden  and  Norway ;  they 
refused  to  restore  Poland,  where  Napoleon  had,  and  there  alone, 
aroused  hopes  of  the  recognition  of  national  independence;  they  re- 
divided  Italy  into  states  ruled  by  foreign  princes  and  gave  to  the 
Hapsburgs  both  Lombardy  and  Venetia ;  and  they  paid  no  attention 
to  the  demand  for  a  united  Germany.  The  inevitable  result  was  to 
be  seen  in  the  insurrections  in  Belgium  and  Poland  in  1830  and  in 
the  various  national  demonstrations  in  Italy  and  Germany,  which 
preceded  and  succeeded  them.  Far  more  important  was  the  Revolu 
tion  of  July,  1830,  in  France,  which  in  its  overthrow  of  Charles  X. 
opened  the  way  to  the  free  expression  of  political  thought  in  the 
country  which  was  still  intellectual  leader  of  western  Europe. 

The  rise  of  the  principle  of  nationality  during  the  Napoleonic 
period  had  been  mainly  marked  by  the  poets,  of  whom  Wordsworth 
in  England  and  Arndt  in  Germany  were  the  most  typical,  for  the 
years  of  actual  conflict  were  not  favorable  to  historical  study,  or, 
indeed,  to  studies  of  any  kind.  But  when  peace  had  been  restored, 
the  nationalist  point  of  view,  which  was  to  control  the  minds  of  men 
throughout  the  nineteenth  century,  began  to  influence  both  his 
torical  research  and  historical  writing.  As  early  as  1816  the  great 
German  statesman,  Stein,  who  had  been  the  chief  German  exponent 
of  the  German  national  idea  in  the  German  resistance  to  the 
Napoleonic  Empire,  had  conceived  the  idea  of  quickening  the  taste 
for  German  history;  in  1819  the  Society  for  the  Study  of  Early 
German  History  was  founded;  in  1824  the  definite  plan  for  the 


232  H.  M.  Stephens 

publication  of  the  Monumenta  Germaniae  Historica  was  pro 
mulgated;  and  in  1826  the  first  volume  of  the  series  appeared.8 
But  it  was  not  until  after  the  Revolution  of  1830  that  important 
national  histories  began  to  be  written.  In  them  the  influence  of  the 
Romantic  Movement  and  more  particularly  of  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
historical  novels  can  be  seen  in  picturesqueness  of  literary  style  and 
the  attention  paid  to  dramatic  episodes  and  individual  personalities, 
but  through  them  all  runs  the  desire  to  bring  out  the  persistence  of 
the  national  element.  Nowhere  can  this  be  more  clearly  seen  than 
in  Henri  Martin's  Histoire  de  France,  of  which  the  first  edition  ap 
peared  in  1838-1853.  The  aim  of  Martin  is  to  show  that  the 
French  nation  has  always  preserved  its  identity  in  spite  of  its 
adoption  of  the  Latin  language  under  the  Roman  Empire  to  the 
almost  complete  extinction  of  its  original  Celtic  tongue  and  in  spite 
of  the  conquest  by  the  Franks,  which  gave  the  land  its  modern 
name.  Through  such  radical  changes,  Martin  declares  that  a 
national  character,  illustrated  in  the  esprit  gaulois,  persisted  and 
that  the  settlement  within  its  borders  of  German  Franks  and  Scandi 
navian  Northmen  had  not  affected  the  national  identity  of  the  people 
of  France.  The  key  to  French  national  history  is,  according  to 
Martin,  to  be  found  in  the  continuance  of  Celtic  ideas  and  Celtic 
characteristics.  Augustin  Thierry  had  gone  a  step  further  and  in 
his  Histoire  de  la  Conquete  de  I'Angleterre  par  les  Normands,  pub 
lished  in  1825,  had  rejoiced  in.  the  victory  of  France  over  England 
at  Hastings  as  if  it  had  been  a  battle  between  the  nations  that  had 
fought  at  Waterloo.  Jules  Michelet,  in  his  Histoire  de  France, 
published  in  1836-1843,  was  almost  dithyrambic  in  his  portraiture 
of  the  French  nation,  which  had  become  to  him  a  personal  hero. 
Nor  should  the  name  of  Guizot  be  forgotten,  for  his  services  to  the 
national  history  of  France  included  not  only  his  Histoire  de  la 
Civilisation  en  France,  published  in  1828-1830,  but  also  his  founda 
tion  of  the  Societe  de  THistoire  de  France  in  1832  and  his  com 
mencement  of  the  publication  by  the  French  government  in  1833  of 
the  Documents  inedits  sur  I'Histoire  de  France. 

But,  after  all,  the  nationalistic  tendency  of  French  historians 
under  the  monarchy  of  July  did  not  have  a  great  political  effect  nor 
tend  to  change  the  condition  of  Europe.  France  had  shown  her 
glowing  national  spirit  in  the  days  of  the  Reign  of  Terror,  and  her 
nationalistic  historians  only  worked  to  emphasize  with  some  exag 
geration  the  antiquity  of  the  existence  of  such  a  spirit.  It  was 
otherwise  in  Germany  and  Italy.  There  the  problem  of  the 
nationalist  historians  was  to  show  that  in  spite  of  ancient  political 

3  Gooch,  History  and  Historians  in  the  Nineteenth  Century   (1913),  p.  65. 


Nationality  and  History  233 

divisions  there  had  always  been  a  German  nation  and  an  Italian 
nation.  This  is  not  an  address  on  historiography  or  a  summary  of 
the  growth  of  the  effect  of  the  national  spirit  in  creating  the  modern 
German  Empire  or  the  modern  Italian  Kingdom.  Bismarck  is  re 
ported  to  have  said  that  next  to  the  Prussian  army,  it  was  the  Ger 
man  professors  of  history  who  had  done  the  most  to  create  the  new 
Germany  under  the  hegemony  of  Prussia.  The  views  set  forth  by 
the  long  list  of  eminent  German  historians  from  Dahlmann  through 
Droysen  and  Sybel  to  Treitschke  dwelt  upon  the  historic  unity  of 
the  German  people  and  argued  for  the  creation  of  the  united  Ger 
man  state,  which  had  been  foreshadowed  in  the  united  German 
movement  against  the  Napoleonic  Empire.  Before  1848  the  tend 
ency  of  some  German  historians,  especially  in  the  south  and  west, 
was  to  promote  a  Germany  which  should  have  its  main  political 
centre  between  the  Rhine  and  the  Elbe  and  it  is  not  without 
significance  that  the  German  Parliament  of  1848,  which  was  largely 
called  together  through  the  influence  of  professors,  should  have  met 
at  Frankfort ;  but  the  failure  of  the  revolutionary  movement  of 
1848  opened  the  way  for  union  under  the  leadership  of  Prussia. 
The  passionate  nationalism  of  the  new  Germany  was  shown  in  its 
annexation  of  Schleswig-Holstein  and  Alsace-Lorraine,  which  were 
both  claimed  by  the  new  Germany  upon  historic  as  well  as  upon 
linguistic  and  racial  grounds,  and  is  seen  in  the  demands  made  for 
the  inclusion  in  the  German  Empire  of  all  territory  in  which  the 
German  language  is  spoken  and  that  was  once  a  part  of  the  old 
Holy  Roman  Empire. 

In  Italy  the  movement  of  the  Risorgimento  was  reflected  in  his 
torical  works  as  well  as  in  poetry  and  romance,  and  in  no  work 
more  typically  than  in  Botta's  Storia  dell'  Italia,  intended  as  a  con 
tinuation  of  Guicciardini  and  published  in  1834. 

In  states  that  had  long  possessed  national  unity,  there  could  not  be 
any  political  result  of  the  doctrine  of  nationality.  There  could  only  be, 
as  in  France,  a  deepening  of  the  sense  of  national  patriotism  and  a 
conviction  that  national  unity  should  be  an  article  of  political  faith, 
which  implied  the  antagonism  of  every  nation  to  every  other  nation. 
England  waited  long  for  its  national  historian.  Although  many  Eng 
lish  historians  were  fanatically  nationalistic  and  supremely  insular 
in  their  conviction  of  the  superiority  of  their  own  over  every  other 
nation,  it  was  not  until  1874,  when  J.  R.  Green  published  his  Short 
History  of  the  English  People,  that  a  modern  nationalist  historian, 
with  intent  to  insist,  like  Michelet,  upon  the  personality  of  the 
nation,  and  to  exaggerate,  like  Martin,  the  antiquity  of  national 


234  H-  M.  Stephens 

unity,  actually  appeared.  The  immediate  success  of  Green's  book 
was  not  only  the  result  of  its  extraordinary  literary  merit,  but  also 
of  its  expression  of  a  national  feeling,  which  had  been  steadily 
growing  in  intensity.  Don  Modesto  Lafuente  in  his  Historia  de 
Espana,  published  between  1850  and  1867,  has  attempted  a  task  for 
Spain  resembling  that  undertaken  for  France  by  Henri  Martin,  but 
with  hardly  the  same  success.  It  would  be  ungracious  in  this  pres 
ence  to  deal  at  any  length  with  American  nationalist  historians, 
further  than  to  point  out  that  two  former  presidents  of  this  As 
sociation,  James  Schouler,  whose  History  of  the  United  States  under 
the  Constitution  was  mostly  published  between  1880  and  1889,  and 
John  Bach  McMaster,  whose  History  of  the  People  of  the  United 
States  appeared  from  1883  to  1914,  show  themselves  to  be  inspired 
with  the  highest  national  and  patriotic  enthusiasm.  It  is  curious  to 
note  that  such  nationalist  histories  as  those  of  Green  and  Schouler 
and  McMaster  did  not  see  the  light  until  after  the  doctrine  of 
nationalism  had  found  its  fullest  expression  in  Europe  in  the 
foundation  of  the  German  Empire  and  the  Kingdom  of  Italy. 

But  the  most  interesting  phenomenon  in  the  rise  of  the  doctrine 
of  nationality  in  the  nineteenth  century  has  been  the  revival  of  small 
nationalities.  It  is  easy  to  understand  how  such  great  nations  as 
France,  England,  and  Spain  caught  the  new  spirit;  it  is  easy  to 
understand  how  the  new  national  units  like  Italy  and  Germany  were 
urged  towards  consolidation  by  historic  national  feeling;  but  it  is 
not  so  easy  to  explain  how  small  nationalities,  that  had  been  sub 
merged,  sometimes  for  centuries,  and  that  had  been  trampled  upon 
by  their  larger  neighbors,  responded  to  the  new  movement.  Here 
the  modern  historian  triumphed.  He  recalled  to  the  smaller  and 
submerged  peoples  the  traditions  of  their  former  sovereign  inde 
pendence  and  stimulated  their  sense  of  nationality  in  the  present  by 
dwelling  upon  their  glorious  past. 

This  was  the  side  of  the  question  that  was  dealt  with  by  your 
president  in  the  article  he  published  in  1887  upon  "  Great  Historians 
and  their  Influence  upon  Small  Nationalities".  He  had  been  in 
vited  to  write  the  article  upon  Portugal  in  the  ninth  edition  of  the 
Encyclopaedia  Britannica,  and  on  that  account  had  been  led  to  the 
study  of  the  Portuguese  historical  writers.  He  found  one  Portu 
guese  historian  towering  above  the  others,  the  recognized  founder 
of  the  modern  historical  school  of  Portugal.  He  perceived  that  it 
was  the  revival  of  interest  in  the  glorious  past  of  Portugal,  as  shown 
in  the  writings  of  her  poets  and  historians  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
that  had  killed  the  Iberianist  idea  of  the  political  union  of  Spain  and 


Nationality  and  History  235 

Portugal,  and  this  led  him  to  inquire  if  the  same  was  true  of  other 
small  nationalities  of  Europe,  which  had  been  united  and  famous  in 
the  past.  The  truth  was  evident,  and  the  article  of  1887  was  the 
result.  After  sketching  the  work  of  Alexandre  Herculano  de  Car- 
valho  e  Araujo,  whose  Historia  de  Portugal  was  published  in  1845- 
1850  and  who  started  the  series  of  national  documents  known  as 
the  Portugalliae  Monumenta  Historica,  the  writer  dealt  with  Franz 
Palacky,  whose  Geschichte  Bohmens  appeared  between  1836  and 
1854,  and  who  reminded  the  Czech  population  of  Bohemia  of  the 
glorious  days  of  Huss  and  Ziska.  The  result  of  Palacky's  work 
was  to  stimulate  the  consciousness  of  Bohemian  nationality,  which 
had  revived  again  in  the  nineteenth  century  after  more  than  one 
hundred  and  fifty  years  of  severe  repression  at  the  hands  of  the 
Hapsburg  government.  It  would  take  too  long  here  to  cover  again 
the  ground  occupied  by  the  article  of  1887.  It  is  enough  to  state 
that  the  establishment  of  Rumania  as  a  sovereign  state  was  preceded 
by  the  revival  of  the  study  of  Rumanian  history,  culminating  in  the 
great  work  of  Alexandru  Xenopol,  L'Histoire  des  Roumains  de  la 
Dacie  Trajane,  In  Finland  and  in  Poland  and  in  Croatia,  in 
Sweden  and  in  Denmark,  and  above  all  in  Belgium,  profound  and 
passionate  historical  studies  were  published  and  the  creation  of  a 
national  spirit  was  even  more  pronounced,  if  that  were  possible,  in 
these  small  states,  that  especially  cherished  the  memory  of  their 
past,  than  in  larger  countries,  which  had  a  powerful  present  as  well 
as  a  splendid  past. 

This  brief  account  of  nationalist  historians  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury  and  of  their  work  in  promoting  the  idea  and  consciousness  of 
nationality  leads  back  to  the  opening  note  of  this  address.  Since  the 
spirit  of  nationality  was  in  the  air  they  yielded  to  it.  To  them  the 
fundamental  righteousness  of  the  national  idea  was  as  clear  as  the 
truth  of  the  Christian  religion  was  to  the  chroniclers  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  They  did  not  argue  about  it,  for  it  needed  no  arguments; 
they  felt  and  expressed  their  feelings.  From  them  and  from  their 
writings,  which  supported  the  instinctive  cry  of  national  poets  and 
the  careful  policy  of  nationalist  statesmen  by  appeals  to  the  past, 
comes  the  conviction  that  nations  are  the  only  bases  of  progress  in 
civilization,  and  that  every  nation  owes  it  to  the  world  to  extend, 
by  force  if  necessary,  its  particular  brand  of  civilization  to  alien  and 
therefore  inferior  peoples.  National  patriotism  became  the  national 
creed.  It  filtered  through  the  entire  educational  system  of  modern 
states.  However  excellent  patriotism  may  be  in  itself,  it  has  had 
some  startling  effects  when  based  upon  nationalist  histories.  The 


236  H.  M.  Stephens 

idea  of  a  common  Christianity  binding  all  Christian  peoples  together 
in  one  religion  has  disappeared;  the  belief  in  the  brotherhood  of 
man  has  had  no  chance.  Americans  are  taught  from  childhood  to 
hate  Britishers  by  the  study  of  American  history,  and  not  only  the 
descendants  of  the  men  who  made  the  Revolution,  but  every  newly 
arrived  immigrant  child  imbibes  the  hatred  of  the  Great  Britain 
of  to-day  from  the  patriotic  ceremonies  of  the  public  schools.  Ger 
mans  were  taught  to  hate  Frenchmen  by  the  study  of  German  history, 
and  the  reply  made  by  Ranke  to  Thiers  in  1871,  when  the  French 
historian  visited  Berlin  after  the  overthrow  of  Napoleon  III.,  and 
asked  why  the  Germans  were  bent  upon  continuing  the  war  with 
France,  was  the  simple  truth  that  "  The  Germans  were  fighting 
against  Louis  XIV."  Hymns  of  hate  are  the  inevitable  outcome  of 
national  patriotism  based  upon  national  histories.  Family  blood- 
feuds,  the  vendettas  of  the  Corsicans  and  the  Kentucky  mountaineers, 
are  considered  proofs  of  a  backward  civilization,  but  national  hatreds 
are  encouraged  as  manifestations  of  national  patriotism. 

Nationalist  historians  must  bear  their  share  of  blame  for  this, 
but,  as  was  said  at  the  beginning  of  this  address,  every  generation 
writes  its  own  history  of  the  past.  The  historian  is  influenced  by 
the  prevailing  spirit  of  his  age,  and  he  feeds  the  spirit  of  national 
intolerance  to-day  as  his  predecessors  fed  the  flames  of  religious 
intolerance  in  days  gone  by.  Woe  unto  us !  professional  historians, 
professional  historical  students,  professional  teachers  of  history,  if 
we  cannot  see,  written  in  blood,  in  the  dying  civilization  of  Europe, 
the  dreadful  result  of  exaggerated  nationalism  as  set  forth  in  the 
patriotic  histories  of  some  of  the  most  eloquent  historians  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  May  we  not  hope  that  this  will  be  but  a  passing 
phase  of  historical  writing,  since  its  awful  sequel  is  so  plainly  ex 
hibited  before  us,  and  may  we  not  expect  that  the  historians  of  the 
twentieth  century  may  seek  rather  to  explain  the  nations  of  the  world 
to  each  other  in  their  various  contributions  to  the  progress  of  civili 
zation  and  to  bear  ever  in  mind  the  magnificent  sentiment  of  Goethe : 
"  Above  the  nations  is  humanity  ". 

H.  MORSE  STEPHENS. 


